Welcome to the web’s most comprehensive site of quotations by women. 44,279 quotations are searchable by topic, by author's name, or by keyword. Many of them appear in no other collection. And new ones are added continually.

“We all carry a dream about Mama's chicken. If they set to music what we feel and remember of that chicken, Beethoven would be a forgotten article altogether.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotChildren of Joy,&quot Rites of Passage (1972)

“Those boys could hear a meat bone being dropped into soup half a mile away. If a man brushed a crumb from his beard, there was their knock on his door ...”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotChildren of Joy,&quot Rites of Passage (1972)

“... this was one of the penalties of being a 'good' wife and mother. Her life was a mass of details, endless and entangled, all together, all unsorted: trivial things and important things wound into and against one another, all warring for her attention. Changing the goldfish water wasn't vital, but it couldn't wait; teaching the children their Bible was vital, but it could wait. Listening to them, growing with them, that was vital; but the bills had to be paid now, the dinner was burning right now ...”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotChildren of Joy,&quot Rites of Passage (1972)

“When he was waiting, he found he could never commit himself deeply to anything else. The fact of his waiting wouldn't let him go.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotTimekeeper,&quot Rites of Passage (1972)

“... we were then as we are now: modern American Jews, tangled in compromise, passing the past and the heritage hand to hand like a hot potato and wincing with pain between the toss and the catch.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotCertain Distant Suns,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“Money in the hand is real — coins and bills. The rest I don't believe in, and I don't think I ever did, really. What's a check, after all, but a promise — mine, the bank's. Me, I know, but the bank?”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotCertain Distant Suns,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“I have found this to be true, that one sin begets a dozen others.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotThings in Their Season,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“The gift is that we are unfinished. The sixth day is not yet over for us.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotThings in Their Season,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“... suicide is the ultimate 'one-up,' as it were, the accusation that brooks no defense, the argument won at last.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotThey Live,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“... suicide is a crime — the only crime that, if successful, guarantees that the perpetrator will not be punished for it. This makes it the most serious crime of all.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotThey Live,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“Worrying is one of my few forms of prayer.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotThe Jaws of the Dog,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“... all children blackmail their parents with their innocence.”

Joanne Greenberg,

&quotOn Tiptoe They Must Leave, the Pious of Israel,&quot High Crimes and Misdemeanors (1979)

“What do you do with mother love and mother wit when the babies are grown and gone away?”